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The Valley of Death
Time is running out. With rebel activity increasing across the galaxy, the UNSC finds itself harried from every corner. In a desperate effort to halt rebel activity on a key outpost world, the UNSCDF dispatches TF 77.4, an elite task unit of shadowy special operators, to crush the rebellion and bring peace. Plans break down, chaos erupts, and soon battle-hardened Marine colonel Scott McMaster and an enigmatic SPECWAR operator known only as "Boresight" are caught in a mission which will test every fiber of their conscience, duty and courage. Prologue The valley was harsh and barren, its rocky landscape disturbed only by the whistling wind. Below, a tiny settlement huddled, the ramshackle collection of miserable huts vainly seeking shelter between the stony cliffs. Few men would have chosen to make such a place their home; but these were no ordinary men. Only in the wilderness, far from any vestige of life of civilization, could these desperate outcasts find safety. And now, surrounded by desolation, they thought they could escape the dangers they had created for themselves. Here, in the wilderness, their hubris made them safe. Here, they no longer thought they had to run. Pride comes before a fall… Unseen by man and beast alike, the motionless figure crouched, his formless shape blending seamlessly with the rocky outcropping. Things were about to change. Chapter 1 The ops room was alive with activity. Constant chatter emanated from the rows of desks at the front of the room as young men and women armed with headsets and tired expressions did battle from a distance. Walls covered in screens cast a luminescent glow over the room, offering the only light in a room where it was never night or day. McMaster glanced casually at a satellite feed. The black and white screen was filled with blackened, smoking wreckage, the aftermath of a car bomb. That makes five this week… Shaking his head, McMaster turned back to the latest ream of reports the duty officer had just handed him. The emotionless carbon copies drearily expounded upon bombings, drive-by shootings, and the executions of kidnapped UNSC personnel; moderate, yet clearly escalating violence across the planet. “Sir?” The voice at McMaster’s shoulder interrupted his thoughts. Turning, McMaster saw a clean-shaven young ensign with an almost apologetic expression on his face. “Sir, we’ve had a message. Boresight’s found something.” “Contact?” “Yes, sir. They’re in a small compound about a 150 klicks south of here.” “Has Crane taken a look at it?” Lt. Commander Crane was TF 77’s S-2 and one of the few Navy men who McMaster had ever respected personally or professionally. "Yes, sir." “Send the feed to Ops; tell them I want a plan in fifteen minutes. Let’s end this thing once and for all.” --- The SPECWAR operator shifted his grip on the rifle, imperceptibly relaxing just long enough to let the blood circulate. More out of habit that necessity, he inspected his immediate surroundings. Peeling back the piece of tape he had placed over it, he checked the uplink unit. The red LED was still dutifully blinking. Carefully, he replaced the sliver of tape. He’d seen too many good operators lose their lives after blinking bits of gadgetry had betrayed their positions. Glancing upwards, he noted with satisfaction that the camouflage netting he’d so carefully erected the night before was still in place. If anyone wanted to see him, they’d need damn sharp eyes and mil-spec thermal goggles. Below, all seemed calm. The compound was still wrapped in early-morning slumber, motionless. In fact, had it not been for the pungent odor of fresh human feces, vomit, and campfire smoke, an even casual observer might have dismissed the camp as abandoned. But this was no ordinary camp. --- Every cheap plastic chair in the small briefing room was filled. For the handful of unlucky latecomers, it was standing room only and nearly everyone was in some kind of uniform. There were tough-looking operators in digital utilities, many wearing Tridents or the eagles, globes and anchors, grinning Army “dogfaces” wearing little more than undershirts and camouflaged cargo pants, pilots in fire-retardant flight suits with coffee cups in hand, and at the back of the room, two very uncomfortable-looking Air Force intel guys in immaculately-pressed blues. But regardless of their uniform, every one of them scrambled to their feet when McMaster entered the room. “At ease, gentlemen.” The room was filled with sound of scraping chairs and clattering boots as the men noisily returned to their seats. McMaster waited for the noise to die down before speaking. “Gentlemen, we’ve just got word from Boresight,” McMaster paused for effect, “We found what we’re looking for.” It took a moment for the room to process McMaster’s words; but when they finally sunk in, the gathered men erupted in a chorus of shouts and cheers. The colonel waited for the room to quiet before continuing. With a curt nod of his head, he gestured towards a lanky man in the corner. “Commander Crane, if you will.” Crane moved silently to a battered computer terminal at the front of the room. Inserting his ID card into a slot, the officer tapped a few keys. Seconds later, the screen at the front of the room came to life with text and projected images. “Oh, could someone get the lights?” Crane asked, moderately embarrassed with himself for forgetting to have asked earlier. A Marine standing by the door obediently flicked the recessed switches, throwing the room into an artificial twilight. Pulling a palm-sized remote control from the pocket of his wrinkled khakis, Crane gestured at a fuzzy image on the screen. “This is the latest satellite imagery we have of the site. As you can see…” Even by squinting hard, the assembled personnel in the room could barely make out what appeared to be small collection of huts and cheap portable buildings. Seeing their somewhat pained expressions, Crane quickly paged to another image. “Here’s the imagery from Boresight’s position. As you can see, there’s a few technicals here,” Crane’s laser pointer hovered over three beaten-looking pickup trucks, “and a rudimentary fenced perimeter here. The terrain is rough; but it shouldn’t be too much trouble to approach and assault.” “Give the distances involved, we’ll be deploying our assets from the air. Mr. Vasquez will be leading a SPECWAR detachment as Chalk One. Lieutenant Pencala will take the ODSTs in Chalk Two. Chalk One will make the actual assault, while Chalk Two will secure the extraction point and serve as a blocking force for the mission. Both Chalks will be riding with Condors from the 182nd.” “Officially, you are to follow our established ROE. Unofficially, this is a weapons-free mission, gentlemen. Take a few prisoners, the rest ‘tried to escape.’ Any questions?” The collected personnel shook their heads in response. “Good, then let’s get out of here.” Chapter 2 Melville craned his necked upwards, flipping rows of switches in a carefully-practiced sequence. In response, the engines sputtered to life, their long rotors slowly accelerating in a cloud of oily blue smoke. Melville was about to reach for another set when he heard his co-pilot swearing over the din of the rotors. “Hey Skins, what’s the matter?” Skinnard was fiddling with a stuck knob on the instrument panel. “Pressure indicator and altimeter are actin’ screwy,” Skinnard yelled, trying to make himself heard over the whining engines. “Is that a no-go?” Melville asked. He only had a few hours on the newer marks of the Condor, not enough to make pre-flight decision such as this; but as the pilot he needed to know if the problem was serious enough to ground the aircraft. “Shouldn’t be, backups look good,” Skinnard replied casually, returning to his routine of flipping switches. Melville flashed a thumbs-up to the green-jerseyed enlisted man standing on the tarmac, received the same signal in reply, and eased the throttles forward. Almost instantly, the Condor leapt upwards, springing away from the tarmac with the natural ease of a machine built to fly. “Buckshot 1-1 is airborne,” Melville declared over the radio. CWO4 Cadbury, Melville’s wingman, chimed in with a similar call while he obediently formed up on Melville’s wing. Throttles to the firewalls, the two tiltrotors quickly overflew the last of Camp Kitchener’s relative safety, heading for the wilderness the sailors, soldiers, and Marines of TF-77 had come to only half-jokingly call the “Badlands.” --- The acrid smoke sent danger bells ringing in Melville’s mind. Fire! Eyes watering, the pilot frantically scanned the smoky cockpit in a desperate search for flames. Yet just as quickly as it had begun, his panic faded away. Skinnard was tossing a charred match out the window, relishing the first puffs of his newly-lit Sweet William. “Goddammit Skins, why do you have to smoke that thing now?” Melville complained, vainly trying to wave away the encroaching smoke. Skinnard simply grinned and kept puffing away. “Hey, flight’s been good so far. ‘Sides, smokes are for luck.” The weathered warrant officer was right; thus far, the flight had been routine, an utterly ordinary sojourn over the planet’s featureless plains. Things were about to change. --- The explosion blasted Melville from his daydream with the roar of a thousand battles. Through his weary eyes, he again glimpsed smoke; yet this was different. It was black, oily, filling the cockpit, choking his lungs. Melville cast a desperate glance outside the canopy. What he saw made his heart freeze. Groaning like a wounded animal, the right engine was belching a dense stream of smoke, leaving the rotor to desperately flog the air like a drunken windmill. The sight of the wounded engine sent icy tendrils of fear creeping down Melville’s veins. For a moment, he froze muscles paralyzed, and then some primal reflex kicked in. Slamming the rudder pedals to the left, Melville firewalled the remaining engine, shouting at Skinnard to rein in the damaged engine and feather the flailing rotor. For a moment, the desperate maneuvers seemed to work; but then the dials and gauges resumed their wild circles. And then they smashed together. The spinning rotors of Melville’s aircraft sawed into his wingman’s cockpit, tearing glass, metal, and flesh into a hail of lethal debris. In an instant Cadbury and his copilot were mashed to a bloody pulp in an instant, sending wild patterns of crimson gore skywards. Stricken, the tiltrotors grappled in a deadly embrace, falling from the sky like wounded birds, smoke streaming from their wounds. Chapter 3 “Sir, we’ve lost contact with Buckshot 1-1,” the controller observed aloud, worriedly tapping several keys on the dimly-lit console. The unwanted interruption irritated McMaster. Communications failures were a routine and frustrating part of the spartan life TF 77.4 was obligated to endure at Camp Kitchener. “Try again,” McMaster commanded, his voice edged with the dying energy of stress, sleepless nights and weak coffee. The airman obediently returned to his work; but to no avail. “Still no contact, sir.” “Raise 1-2, see what’s going on.” “Yes sir.” Tugging at the microphone stalk arching from his headset, the controller began a dreary litany of calls to ‘Buckshot 1-2,’ and for several seconds, the queries radiated from the controller’s small cubicle, each successive sentence filled with mounting frustration. Eventually the calls stopped, and with a weary expression the airman swiveled to face the colonel. “No luck, sir. Both channels are down. Nothing but static from the feeds.” McMaster sighed and rubbed his forehead, his mind turning possibilities like rocks in a tumbler, drawing upon every intuition, experience, and insight three decades in the Corps had given him. At last he spoke, “Contact Boresight, ask him what he sees. Extrapolate from their last known vector, scan and give me the sat imagery. We’re gonna find ‘em.” --- The crackling breath of the radio sent a ripple of distraction flowing through the special operator’s mind. Mumbling slightly, he pulled a hand away from his rifle’s stock and keyed the mic fastened to his throat. “Go ahead.” The voice on the other end seemed unusually tense. “Ah…Boresight, this is Totem interrogative. Uh…can you see anything?” “Please specify direction and type, over.” “Uh, that would be air callsigns to your, your northeast, yeah…to your northeast, Boresight,” the voice on the other end seemed nervous and somewhat…uncertain. The operator swore silently to himself. TF 77.4 may have been short-staffed, indeed this very shortage of manpower was the reason he was on this mission alone; but even an unfilled TTOE was no excuse for gross and blatant incompetence. Still swearing under his breath, he crawled the few feet to the hollow where he had stowed his laden rucksack. Tugging his compact binocular from beneath his rolled pup tent, the operator scanned the horizon, his keen eyes searching the gray sky for any sign of man or machine. At first there was nothing, little more than clouds and grass filling the junction between earth and sky; but then he saw it. From behind a small hillock, two fingers of smoke and flame reached skywards. The operator keyed his mic, a grim realization forming in his mind. “Boresight has two, I say again, two columns of smoke about 30 klicks east of stakeout, over.” “Uh, OK Boresight…” the controller’s voice hesitated, “Could they be tire fires?” “Negative, Totem that’s avgas and burning composite. You’ve got burning airframes out there.” The line went quiet for a moment, disturbed only by a set of concerned whispers from the other end. Damn pogue. Left his mic on… Then the controller’s voice returned, edged with poorly-hidden panic. “Boresight, you’re gonna have to hold your position. Looks like we will not be striking the target today. Just hold tight and we’re gonna find a way to get you outta there.” The SPECWAR operator muttered in frustration before replying in fiercer, more audible tones, “Negative, Totem.” The controller seemed taken aback at the unexpected words. Even though the movies and cheap adventure novels often had them pinned them as lawless wild cards, “shooters,” at least in his meager experience, generally ‘stuck to the plan.’ What he had just heard from Boresight seemed impossible; and so, like most men when confronted with the unexpected, he chose to disbelieve what he heard. “Say again, Boresight. You replied in the negative?” “That’s right, Totem. Boresight is moving in.” More scuffling and whispers on the other end. Then, after some banging and low cursing, a lower, more gravelly voice spoke. “Boresight, this is McMaster. Keep your ass where it is.” “Sir, I cannot comply with that order.” McMaster’s voice hardened to a razor’s edge. “Boresight, do not take a sh*t on me.” “Sir, no can do.” “Son, why are you doin’ this? You’re gonna get your ass killed down there if you try.” “’Cause I’m sick of all this f*cking killing, sir. F*cking car bombs. F*cking dead kids. All ‘cause we’ve been letting too much sh*t happen. 'Cause we let too many chances slip through our fingers,” the man paused, before stamping his final words out in steel. “No. No, not today. No more. It’s gotta end here.” “Son, I know how you feel. Let’s not have this end badly.” For a moment McMaster almost seemed to be pleading with the man; but this instant soon passed, and his usual commanding timbre returned. “We’ve lost too many good men today. I don’t want to lose another.” “Sorry, sir looks we’ve got a bad link. I...I can't hear you, sir.” the operator’s voice was filled with quiet, grinning courage, “Well, looks like this it. I’ll be seeing you.” “Boresight, get your ass back. Now!” McMaster snarled. He was too late. Behind the Scenes *''The Valley of Death'' has many inspirations. Elements of its content and style are drawn from books and films like Black Hawk Down, Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers, as well as the work of Tom Clancy.